“We might as well just say screw it; let’s have everybody in,” Jones said, mincing few words a couple of hours before what turned out to be the final game of his career.

And that’s the general feeling among baseball people, whether spoken or unspoken.

The players, managers, scouts, they pretty much unanimously have negative feelings about the situation.

And that’s perfectly understandable.

People who live in a competitive environment expect as a matter of routine that those who win the games get the best situations in attempting to move on. 

UNNECESSARY TROUBLE 

Baseball’s changed all that this October.

And the shame is, it could have been avoided.

MLB defends itself by explaining it had already set its regular-season schedule by the time the second wild card team was OK’d. And the postseason dates, as well.

Nothing they could do, the suits insisted.

It isn’t us, it’s the television people, they say. You know what sticklers they can be. We just had to squeeze any extra dates in as best we could.

Well ... maybe.

If I’m the Yankees, my response is simple enough:

“We showed up every place we were supposed to, rain or shine, and won more games than any other team in the league over the course of six-plus months.

“We did it without Mariano, with a limited A-Rod, and a slew of other bangs and bruises.

“And with a pitching staff that bent, and bent, but never broke.

“And for our troubles, we are being handed an Amtrak schedule for the New York-to-Baltimore run.

“With the looming threat that, by the time we get back to town, we may be without two starting pitchers, including my ace CC Sabathia, and in the type of hole that is almost impossible to escape.”

That possibility is unfair, and, if I may be high-minded for just a moment, not up to the standards of a major professional sports league in America, circa 2012.

And it could have been worse.

Way, way worse, if you happen to be a Yankees fan.

Consider this: If the final week of the regular season had played out a little differently, the Orioles and the Yankees could have been tied on top of the AL East, tied with the best records in the league.

That would have necessitated a tiebreaker game Thursday. Andy Pettitte would have likely drawn that start.

And had the Yankees lost to the O’s in the tiebreaker they would have been forced to start Sabathia in Friday’s one-game wild card game.

Had they lost that, the season would be over.

Had they won, they’d go into the best-of-five ALDS with Pettitte and Sabathia unavailable until late in the series.

That would have been a nightmare scenario. 

WHAT’S THE RUSH? 

So, considering all of the above, let me ask a question:

Why didn’t baseball save the extra wild card addition and all the changes it makes, until the 2013 season?

After all, what was the rush?

The big leagues did last 91 seasons (1903-1994) without messing with the way they did business. National League winner vs. American League in a World Series worked fine for all that time, it would seem.

And even when they went to the LCS format, with two teams from each league advancing to postseason, and later the four-team format (three division winners and one wild card) those came off without a glitch of any real kind (other than that games were being played later and later into chilly fall nights).

So, there seemed no real reason to force-feed the new idea into an already-constructed, and totally intractable, schedule.

Unless, of course, the sight of extra dollar signs on the horizon just proved too tempting for the suits in the home office.

Is the revenue from a few extra postseason games during one season really worth compromising the whole idea of fall baseball?

Is that why the Yankees, with the best record in the American League, are being gifted with Games 1 and 2 of the ALDS in Baltimore today and tomorrow? 